After 22 years of marriage, he simulates his death in kayak to start his life at the end of the world. Do you have to be crazy to act like this?

After 22 years of marriage, he simulates his death in kayak to start his life at the end of the world. Do you have to be crazy to act like this?
Because he no longer wanted his family life, an American organized a spectacular “flight”, featuring his death before joining his Crush in Ukraine. What type of profile should you have to carry out such a lie? Our psychologist looked at his case.

Nothing would have stopped it seems. In the United States, a man staged his own death to join his mistress, leaving a woman and 3 children in passing. A crazy escape, thought in the smallest detail, or almost.

A completely staged drowning

In August 2024, Ryan Borgwardt, 44, who could simply have divorced, chose another outcome. To get out of his family life, he claimed to want to take a kayak walk in the Wisconsin. A last sms sent to his wife, from the lake … then nothing. A tragic disappearance that puts the region in turmoil. Research is launched for weeks, until “rescuers get their hands on his business and mobile phone. They come to the conclusion that man is unfortunately drowned. Leaving 3 orphaned children.

8,000 kilometers for a new life

In reality, Ryan Borgwardt was all that was good. The man had hidden an inflatable boat for children in his kayak then planned an electric bike on the bank to flee. That’s not all: after a bus to Canada, a flight to Paris, then another to Georgia, here he is 8,000 km from her home to reach a Ukrainian woman met on the Internet. But the fugitive had not thought of everything: his conversations on the web made it possible to locate it. Caught by the investigators, the man then confides 3 months after his run “I realize that I created this disorder and that now everyone tries to pick up the songs ” As if he had made a little stupidity.

The profile of a man looking for control

For Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist, if the man seems to take his getaway as a freedom, his act is much heavier than that and certainly toxic.

“We are no longer just in painful separation, we switch to the delirious staging. Fein your own death is a leak, yes, but also an attempt to do absolute control: disappear to be reborn, erasing the other in passing.”

And the inability to settle a conflict

But why act like this and refuse to take into account a family that counted for 22 years? For the expert, this translates more than a share of cowardice. “”Behind, there is surely the inability to face the conflict, the fear of direct confrontation, and a logic where the other no longer exists as a subject. It is radical, but above all terribly revealing a psychic functioning where reality becomes secondary in relation to the fantasy. ” The man also confided, his flight was for him “A crazy and emotional dream.”

“”So we can of course smile in the story so much it seems incredible but she still says something quite dark. Some prefer to invent an absurd fiction rather than assuming a real separation ” concludes the psychologist.

Harder will be the fall

The dream will therefore have lasted 3 months. But reality will not have missed Ryan Borgwardt. A few days ago, the cabinetmaker was tried and sentenced to an obstruction of 89 days in prison which corresponds to the 89 days of his disappearance. He will have to pay $ 30,000 to reimburse the costs incurred for research. As for his wife, and ex widow therefore, she asked for divorce last May. It’s up to you to dream better.